The present invention relates to chair-type massaging apparatus.
One conventional chair-type massaging apparatus includes a chair body having a seat portion and a backrest portion, and a massage drive unit 100, as shown in FIG. 11, disposed inside the backrest portion. The massage drive unit 100 is so constructed as to expand and retract massaging heads 103 such as kneading balls with respect to a back portion or a like portion of the user by expanding and contracting air cells 102 each having a bellows periphery 101.
The air cells 102 include upper and lower pairs of right and left air cells disposed on the opposite sides of the backbone position of the backrest portion. By activating the upper pair of air cells 102 and the lower pair of air cells 102 alternately or all the four air cells 102 simultaneously the massage apparatus performs kneading, tapping, vibration and other massaging operations either singly or in combination.
In a massaging apparatus of this type the massage drive unit 100 can be electrically or manually moved substantially along the height of the backrest portion. Among such a massaging apparatus, there are ones which cause massage drive unit 100 to continuously move upward and downward repeatedly in parallel with the aforementioned massaging operations of the massage drive unit 100 thereby providing a rolling massage effect.
Expanding the upper or lower pair of air cells 102 simultaneously causes the corresponding massaging heads 103 to press portions of the user on the right and left sides of the backbone simultaneously. This often makes the user feel repelled from the backrest portion and, hence, cannot provide a satisfactory kneading effect though the resulting tap or vibration massaging effects are satisfactory to a certain extent.
The massage drive unit 100 is constructed to be movable substantially along the height of the backrest portion as described above for each massaging head 103 thereof to move to a position exactly corresponding to a stiff portion of the user's back, thereby providing effective massage. The massage drive unit 100 of such construction is to accommodate itself to different users having different heights and different stiff portions. However, moving the massage drive unit 100 between the neck position and the waist position each time takes too much time and hence may prevent a user from relaxing if the user is impatient.
Further, with the typical massage drive unit employing air cells 102, air discharge from expanded air cells 102 is relatively slow and, hence, the contraction rate of the air cells 102 is relatively low. This, it is difficult for the user to enjoy a feeling of abrupt relief from the pressing of the massaging heads 103. That is, a repetition of kneading or similar motions is too slow, thus resulting in a relatively weaken massaging effects.
To overcome this disadvantage, such massaging apparatus is required to be provided with, for example, a suction device in association with air cells 102. The provision of such suction device or the like, however, makes the apparatus larger in size, more complicated and more costly, and generates more noisy sounds of operations.
The present invention has been accomplished in view of the foregoing circumstances and has an object to provide a chair-type massaging apparatus capable of providing excellent massaging effects by, in particular, kneading operations.